The Puffer Forum

Foreground: My fiancee has developed a love of puffers over the past year or so, she has no previous aquarium experience and thus, she spent a year reading and educating herself on their care. Originally, she wanted one GSP in a 20g tank, they're cute and available...but after further research, we (she) decided on 2 dwarf puffers.

Background: I am a retired Oscar fanatic, I have kept at least 3 55-100g Oscar tanks. I am comfortable with water changes and feeding food other than flakes and pellets.

Here are my questions:

1. In a well-planted 20g aquarium, will two dwarfs live happily along with 4 zebra Otos? We have 2 zebras now, but I am planning to add 2 more if they'll be a good fit.
2. There is nowhere to locally purchase dwarf puffers, so we're searching the web. Is there anywhere you'd recommend? We'd prefer a male/female or female/female pair to avoid stress...are there any online breeders that will work with us on sexing?
3. Filtration...we're using one 20-40g filter and one 10-15g...will this be enough with weekly 25-50% changes?
4. Feeding...our LFS has an abundance of free snails, but I'd like to know the daily feeding requirements.

I'm sure there's more...any beginner tips for dwarfs...please help.

Ill will tellb you to take adavantage as long as possible on those snails. You can consider that a staple diet. Please hold forbmore expirienced and sober responses as people tend to your threde. -spaten optimators

defool89 wrote:Ill will tellb you to take adavantage as long as possible on those snails. You can consider that a staple diet. Please hold forbmore expirienced and sober responses as people tend to your threde. -spaten optimators

1. IME, a 20 US gal , even heavily planted, does not have enough algae to suppoort 4 Otos. I would use only 2 maximum in that size tank. Additionally, Otos do not do well in new tanks. I don't add them to such tanks until the tank is mature or at least 3-6 months old for best survival.

2. I am not experienced with mail-order fishes, so cannot make any suggestion there. But I would much prefer to set a tank with more females than males for DPs, at least two fmales per male. Few breeders hold fishes to sexual maturity.

3. Filtration should be fine.

4. All live material should be QT'd (quarantined)in a separate tank without fish for at least 2-4 weeks. Snails may be maintained with dry fish food during that time. After QT, baby snails may be reared in that same tank to provide ongoing safe and healthy food supplies indefinitely. I use only common pond and/or ramshorn snails for puffers.

My DPs were fed nails and live California blaclworms and did quite well and reproduced on that diet.

HTH

The reason i say snails are a great diet is because the shell helps maintain teeth. They need hard shelled foods as a major player in their foods. That applies to most if not all puffers. If their teeth grow too large it gets difficult to eat. Snails are perfect for dwarfs assuming they are those small pest snails. For puffer keepers they are a great source of food. You can even get a small tank and just toss a buch In a small 5g-10g tank and watch them multiply. You hardly need to maintain the tank because they are pigs and love to wollow in feces and junk normal things would not eat. If you ask how big of snails you need, just look at your puffers eyeballs and that's a good size.

RTR wrote:1. IME, a 20 US gal , even heavily planted, does not have enough algae to suppoort 4 Otos. I would use only 2 maximum in that size tank. Additionally, Otos do not do well in new tanks. I don't add them to such tanks until the tank is mature or at least 3-6 months old for best survival.

It was about two months old before we put them in, and we had some ghost shrimp in there to help the cycling. I'll just stick with the two then.

RTR wrote:2. I am not experienced with mail-order fishes, so cannot make any suggestion there. But I would much prefer to set a tank with more females than males for DPs, at least two fmales per male. Few breeders hold fishes to sexual maturity.

We would prefer more females, hopefully, we get lucky.

3. Filtration should be fine.

RTR wrote:4. All live material should be QT'd (quarantined)in a separate tank without fish for at least 2-4 weeks. Snails may be maintained with dry fish food during that time. After QT, baby snails may be reared in that same tank to provide ongoing safe and healthy food supplies indefinitely. I use only common pond and/or ramshorn snails for puffers.

I always QT'd the feeders for my Oscars, makes sense to do the same for the snails.

RTR wrote:My DPs were fed nails and live California blaclworms and did quite well and reproduced on that diet.

HTH

Where is a good place to purchase blackworms!

defool89 wrote:The reason i say snails are a great diet is because the shell helps maintain teeth. They need hard shelled foods as a major player in their foods. That applies to most if not all puffers. If their teeth grow too large it gets difficult to eat. Snails are perfect for dwarfs assuming they are those small pest snails. For puffer keepers they are a great source of food. You can even get a small tank and just toss a buch In a small 5g-10g tank and watch them multiply. You hardly need to maintain the tank because they are pigs and love to wollow in feces and junk normal things would not eat. If you ask how big of snails you need, just look at your puffers eyeballs and that's a good size.

Good info, will DP's over eat? I couldn't have feeders in with my Oscars round the clock, because they would eat themselves sick. Will DP's do this?

Every puffer is different. They all have personalaties kinda like people. You stick a plate full of bacon infront of me i will eat without chewing until its all In my belly and am in pain while other s may take a few bites and go.. my fahaka eats untill he starts hyperventalating. .. just when you get yours throw some in. If he starts eating them quick then slows down by 3 or 4 i would say 3 or 4 is a good amount. If he keeps eating and his belly is ultrasized you got a potentially obese puffer you should limit his supply..

DPs do not have issues with teeth & will only suck the meat out of the snails. Mine live on a diet of live blackworms.

Well there you have it. You can still breed snails for free.

RTR wrote:1. IME, a 20 US gal , even heavily planted, does not have enough algae to suppoort 4 Otos. I would use only 2 maximum in that size tank. Additionally, Otos do not do well in new tanks. I don't add them to such tanks until the tank is mature or at least 3-6 months old for best survival.

2. I am not experienced with mail-order fishes, so cannot make any suggestion there. But I would much prefer to set a tank with more females than males for DPs, at least two fmales per male. Few breeders hold fishes to sexual maturity.

3. Filtration should be fine.

4. All live material should be QT'd (quarantined)in a separate tank without fish for at least 2-4 weeks. Snails may be maintained with dry fish food during that time. After QT, baby snails may be reared in that same tank to provide ongoing safe and healthy food supplies indefinitely. I use only common pond and/or ramshorn snails for puffers.

My DPs were fed nails and live California blaclworms and did quite well and reproduced on that diet.

HTH

Sometimes I wonder if there exist any regulations in regards to live fish in the US. I've only lost 1 oto as far as my memory served and he came with a head injury, but on this side of the pond both the importers & local shops (at least the companies I am familiar with) QT the fish they get. I even know of a petstore chain that has seperate QT tanks in their store with a sign "not for sale". Might be why the oto mortality rate is so low over here, at least for me, in comparison to all the horror stories I read online. That isnt to say that the mortality rate is lower here but the die off probably occurs before they get to the local stores.

In Sweden at least I see no reason not to add otos right away assuming you have some algae wafers to keep them happy and the tank is cycled. Then again the water from the tap in my area is ideal for algae so it only takes a day or 2 to get an algae overrun tank if you have sufficient lighting, don't even have to add fish food or anything.

If their isnt any regualtion their will be eventually. The government seems to want to regulate everything and.. well thats a different subject but as of now i dont feel any regualtion it probably just smart and more profitable to take care of your livestock the right way. Ive seen dps housed with dozens of dps in a very small space and left as cannibals aas they eat one another. But ive also seen stores treat their livestock like prized jewels. I guess it just depends on stores witts to house livestock properly.

I hope we do get some welfare laws and regulation ASAP. Canada's welfare laws are about 10 years ahead of the US (which is scary as our laws are ghastly) and 20 years behind Europe (which makes US laws 30 years behind Europe). North America has a ridiculous amount of catching up to do. It is a very very safe assumption Tim that livestock in your country are cared for much better than they are over here.

Flutter wrote:I hope we do get some welfare laws and regulation ASAP. Canada's welfare laws are about 10 years ahead of the US (which is scary as our laws are ghastly) and 20 years behind Europe (which makes US laws 30 years behind Europe). North America has a ridiculous amount of catching up to do. It is a very very safe assumption Tim that livestock in your country are cared for much better than they are over here.

You're not even allowed to buy a singlular guinea pig unless you can prove you already have at least 1 other, at least that is what I read on a sign.

Flutter wrote:I hope we do get some welfare laws and regulation ASAP. Canada's welfare laws are about 10 years ahead of the US (which is scary as our laws are ghastly) and 20 years behind Europe (which makes US laws 30 years behind Europe). North America has a ridiculous amount of catching up to do. It is a very very safe assumption Tim that livestock in your country are cared for much better than they are over here.

Tell me about it. I was and still am horrified to see puppies and kittens kept in small cages in pet shops. And my town's last major jokingly said, words to the effect, that every family with children should be given a puppy from the local puppy mill and that should solve the the problem.